Window Cleaning Estimate Template: Pane Count and Access

Short answer: A window cleaning estimate template counts glass, not windows. Every sash is a pane, and inside and outside are two counts, so a double-hung with a storm can be six surfaces on one opening. Price each pane against an access class — floor level, ladder, water-fed pole, lift, or rope descent — then add screens, tracks, and storm removal as separate per-unit lines. Hard water restoration is never included, and every estimate carries a trip minimum.

Almost every bad window job started with someone saying “about twenty windows.” Twenty openings can be forty pieces of glass or a hundred and twenty surfaces, and the difference is three hours. The count is the estimate. Everything else — the access method, the screens, the mineral staining on the rear elevation — is a modifier on a number you have to get exactly right first. Get in the habit of writing the count the same way on the estimate and on the bill, because the customer will compare them, and a quote and a receipt serving different purposes is a distinction worth understanding, which is what invoice versus receipt covers.

What belongs on a window cleaning estimate?

Eight lines, and only two of them are the actual glass.

Line	Unit	Why it is separate
Exterior glass	Pane units	Different access, different speed, different weather risk than interior
Interior glass	Pane units	Furniture, blinds, drop cloths, and a customer standing there
Screens	Each	Remove, wash, dry, reinstall — and the torn one you have to photograph
Tracks and sills	Per opening	Vacuum and detail work, not a wipe
Storm windows	Each	Two extra surfaces plus a removal and a reinstall
Access surcharge	Per elevation, per setup, or per day	Ladder sets, pole work, lift rental, or rigging
Restoration	Per pane or per hour	Mineral etching and construction debris are not cleaning
Trip minimum	Flat	The floor under any job small enough to lose money on

Across the top: the address, the estimate number, the date, the expiration, the total pane count, and whether the price is inside-and-out or exterior only. At the bottom: exclusions, the conditional lines, and the frequency if it is a recurring account.

How do I count panes so the number holds up?

Count the pieces of glass you personally have to squeegee. A double-hung has two sashes, so it is two pane units per side, four for in and out. A storm over it adds two more surfaces and a removal.

Glass unit	Counts as	Reason
Standard sash, up to about 12 sq ft	1.0	The baseline everything else is measured against
Picture window over about 12 sq ft	1.5 to 2.0	More passes, a wider channel, sometimes a second set of hands
Grids sealed inside the insulated unit	1.0	The grid is between the panes — no extra work
True divided lite, six over six	1.75 to 2.5	Detail wiping every lite by hand
French door	1.5 to 2.0 per door	Many small lites, and the frame shows every miss
Sliding patio door panel	1.5 each	Large, heavy, and the track comes with it
Basement hopper or transom	0.5 to 0.75	Small, but you still set up for it
Skylight	2.0 to 4.0 plus an access line	Roof work, and a fall hazard
Storm window	1.0 extra plus removal	Two more faces and two more handling steps

Two counting rules save arguments later. First, exterior-only work is not half the price of in-and-out; it usually runs somewhere around 55 to 65 percent of the combined figure, because the setup, the drive, and the walk-around happen once either way. Second, write the count on the estimate — “51 exterior pane units, 47 interior” — so the person comparing three quotes can see that the cheap one counted twenty windows and you counted the glass.

Which access class does the job fall into?

This is the second half of the price, and it is not a percentage. It is a different method with a different cost structure.

Class	Method	What it changes on the estimate
A	Floor and ground level, both sides reachable	Fastest per pane, no equipment line
B	Extension ladder, second story	Two to four minutes per set and move; soft ground and standoffs slow it further
C	Water-fed pole from the ground	No ladder moves, but you carry purified water, and the glass is left to dry
D	Boom or scissor lift	Rental, delivery, ground conditions, and operator certification — its own per-day line
E	Rope descent system or suspended platform	Rigging, and a document you must have before you tie in

Class E has a hard requirement attached that belongs in the estimate as a precondition rather than a surprise on the morning of the job. Under OSHA’s rope descent system rule, before any RDS work the building owner has to give you written information that each anchorage has been identified, tested, certified and maintained to support at least 5,000 pounds in any direction per attached worker, based on annual inspection and certification at least every ten years, and the standard caps rope descent at 300 feet above grade with limited exceptions. The text is in OSHA 1910.27. If the property manager cannot produce that letter, the job does not get scheduled, and your estimate should say so in one sentence.

Class C has its own hidden cost that new cleaners underprice: purified water is a consumable. RO membranes and DI resin get consumed at a rate that depends entirely on the total dissolved solids in your source water, so the same pole job costs a cleaner in hard-water country noticeably more per pane than one filling from soft municipal supply. Measure your own TDS and track resin changes before you set a pole rate.

What do screens, tracks, and storms add to the count?

They add the parts of the job customers never picture and always notice.

Screens are per unit: pull, wash, dry, reinstall, and re-seat the ones that were already bent. They are also your biggest liability for a small trade — a screen with a hole in it before you touched it becomes your screen the moment you remove it. Photograph damaged screens before removal, list the count on the estimate, and add a line saying frames that are already torn or brittle get cleaned in place.

Tracks and sills split into two products. Wiping the sill is usually inside the pane price. Detailing a track — vacuum, brush, damp detail, and the corners — is per opening at one to two minutes each, so twenty openings is a real thirty minutes.

Storms are the most underpriced item in residential window cleaning. Each one is a removal, two extra glass faces, a reinstall, and often a clip that fights you. Price them at a rate that reflects handling, not glass area.

When is glass restoration a different job entirely?

The moment the marks do not come off with a squeegee.

Hard water etching, sprinkler overspray, construction dust bonded into the surface, stucco splatter, and paint are restoration work: acid or abrasive treatment, dwell time, scrubbing, and a result you cannot promise. Price it per pane at a multiple of your cleaning rate or by the hour, and always after a test panel. The wording that keeps you out of trouble is short: we clean one test area, show you the result, and re-quote the rest from what it shows. Severe etching is permanent.

Post-construction glass carries a second risk that has nothing to do with dirt. Some tempered glass leaves the factory with fabricating debris fused into the surface, and scraping it can leave scratches that were latent before you arrived. The protection is a written scrape policy: a test scrape in a corner, an inspection, and the customer’s signature acknowledging that tempered units are scraped only at their direction.

How do I turn pane counts into a price from my own costs?

Time the tasks once, then let arithmetic do the rest. Your per-pane rate is minutes divided by sixty, multiplied by the hourly figure your business actually needs.

Task	Minutes per unit
Exterior pane, ground level	0.75 to 1.5
Exterior pane, ladder, with set and move amortized	2 to 4
Interior pane, occupied home, blinds and furniture	1.5 to 3
Screen: remove, wash, dry, reinstall	1 to 2 each
Track detail	1 to 2 per opening
Storm: remove, clean both faces, reinstall	3 to 5 each

The hourly figure you multiply by is yours and nobody else’s. It has to carry the operator, the van, ladders that get replaced on a schedule, squeegee rubber changed daily on production days, RO and DI consumables, general liability insurance that is priced for height and for breakable substrates, and every unbilled hour spent on quoting and driving.

Then set the price by margin, not by adding a number to cost. Window cleaning is close to pure labor, so a materials markup is almost meaningless here — the whole business is the spread between what an hour costs you and what an hour bills for. If an hour of production costs you $46 fully loaded and you want to keep 35 percent of the invoice, divide by 0.65 and bill $70.77, not $46 plus 35 percent. That mistake, repeated across a route, is the difference between a wage and a business.

Recurring commercial accounts get a frequency ladder rather than a discount you invent on the phone. Less soil per visit means less time per visit, and that is the only honest reason the per-visit price drops.

Frequency	Soil at arrival	Per-visit price relative to a one-time clean
Weekly	Light	0.5 to 0.6
Biweekly	Light to moderate	0.6 to 0.7
Monthly	Moderate	0.75 to 0.85
Quarterly	Heavy	0.9 to 1.0
One-time	Heavy, unknown	1.0

Verify those ratios against your own stopwatch on the second and third visits. If a weekly storefront takes the same time as the first clean did, the ratio is wrong and the account is losing money quietly.

Why does every window cleaning estimate need a minimum?

Because the drive does not shrink when the job does. A $58 house eleven minutes away and a $58 house thirty-four minutes away are not the same job.

Set the minimum from unbilled time: round-trip drive, setup, teardown, and the walk-around, priced at your hourly target. Thirty-two minutes of unbillable time at a $70 hourly target is $37 before a single pane gets cleaned, which tells you what the floor has to be. Print it on the estimate as its own line even when the job clears it — customers who add three basement windows next spring need to already know the number exists.

What does a filled-in window cleaning estimate look like?

A two-story colonial, inside and out, with four storms on the front elevation and mineral staining on three rear panes from a sprinkler head.

Count

Opening type	Qty	Units each	Exterior	Interior
Double-hung, standard	20	2 (one per sash)	40.0	40.0
Picture window, 26 sq ft	1	1.75	1.75	1.75
Sliding patio door	1	3.0 (two panels)	3.0	3.0
Basement hopper	3	0.75	2.25	2.25
Aluminum storm, front	4	1.0 plus handling	4.0	—
Totals			51.0	47.0

The rates below are placeholders that make the structure readable. Substitute your own.

ESTIMATE #WC-2026-0611 Clearline Window Care Site: 1142 Ardmore Street · Prepared July 21, 2026 · Valid through August 20, 2026

#	Description	Qty	Rate	Amount
1	Exterior glass — ground and 24 ft ladder access, sills wiped	51.0 units	$5.00	$255.00
2	Interior glass — furniture moved and replaced, drop cloths	47.0 units	$4.00	$188.00
3	Storm windows — remove, clean both faces, reinstall	4 ea	$7.00	$28.00
4	Screens — remove, wash, dry, reinstall	20 ea	$3.00	$60.00
5	Track and sill detail	20 openings	$2.50	$50.00
6	Ladder setups, rear elevation, soft ground and standoffs	6 setups	$6.00	$36.00
	Total			$617.00

Trip minimum: $145. This job clears it.

Conditional line: hard water restoration, three rear panes. One test pane is treated first at $45. If the result is acceptable, remaining panes are $38 each. Etched glass may not fully recover, and no result is guaranteed.

Not included: exterior storm frames beyond the four listed, skylights, chandeliers or interior glass above ladder reach, paint or stucco removal, screen repair or rescreening, gutter work, pressure washing.

Access and site notes: rear elevation is on a slope; ladders are footed on standoffs and levelers. Pets must be secured while doors and screens are open. Sprinkler zone on the rear elevation must be off on the service day.

Recurring option: front elevation exterior only, 24 units, on a quarterly rotation at $115 per visit, invoiced after each visit. This sits below the one-time trip minimum because the stop is scheduled into an existing route day, which is the only reason a minimum should ever be waived.

What do I do with the paperwork after they approve it?

Turn it into a bill the same day and a record you can still find next spring. Window cleaning produces a lot of small invoices, and small invoices are exactly the ones that get forgotten, which is why the collection habits in getting clients to pay matter more on a route of $140 stops than on one big job.

Keel is an iOS app that runs entirely on your device: no account, no bank connection, no cloud, no login, and an App Store privacy label that reads Data Not Collected. You can raise the invoice at the curb in about a minute — your logo, your numbering, your brand color, and a payment link the customer scans as a QR code before you load the ladder. Resin cartridges, squeegee rubber, scrapers, and the pole section you snapped in April are all ordinary self-employed tax deductions if the receipt still exists, and Apple Intelligence reads them on device when you photograph them. A route of eight stops a day also puts real mileage on the van, which is what an independent contractor mileage log is built for. Free covers unlimited invoices, receipts, and mileage; Keel Pro is a one-time $249.99 Lifetime purchase rather than a subscription. You can get it on the App Store.

Frequently asked questions

How do I count panes for a window cleaning estimate?

Count each piece of glass you have to squeegee, not each opening. A double-hung is two sashes, so two units per side and four for inside and out. Storms add a unit plus handling. Oversized picture windows count as 1.5 to 2, true divided lites as 1.75 to 2.5, and small basement hoppers as about 0.75.

How much should I charge for exterior-only window cleaning?

Not half. Exterior-only usually lands around 55 to 65 percent of your inside-and-out price, because the drive, the walk-around, the setup, and the teardown all happen once regardless. Build it from your own pane times: exterior ground-level panes run under a minute and a half, while ladder panes run two to four minutes once setting and moving are counted.

Should screens and tracks be included in the price per window?

Keep them as separate per-unit lines. Screens are a removal, a wash, a dry, and a reinstall, plus the risk that an already-torn frame becomes your problem. Track detailing is one to two minutes per opening of vacuuming and brushwork. Bundling both into a pane rate makes your quote look expensive on paper and unprofitable in practice.

Can hard water stains be removed as part of a regular window cleaning?

No, and the estimate should say so. Mineral etching is restoration work involving acids or abrasives, dwell time, and scrubbing, with results that vary by how long the deposits sat. Quote one test pane first, show the customer the outcome, then price the rest per pane or hourly. Deep etching is permanent damage to the glass surface.

What is a reasonable minimum charge for a window cleaning job?

Set it from your unbillable time rather than copying a number. Add the round-trip drive, setup, walk-around, and teardown, then price those minutes at your hourly target. Thirty-two minutes of unbilled time at a $70 hourly figure is $37 before any glass is touched, so a minimum in the low hundreds is common for residential route work.

Do I need special certification to clean windows on a high-rise?

For rope descent systems, OSHA requires the building owner to give you written information that each anchorage has been identified, tested, certified, and maintained for at least 5,000 pounds per attached worker, with annual inspections and certification at least every ten years, and rope descent is limited to 300 feet above grade with narrow exceptions. Make that letter a written precondition on your estimate.

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This article is general information, not professional or tax advice.